New Artistic Director from 2025

Bregenz, 30.9.22. As announced at the end of August, tomorrow marks the start of the six-week application period for the post of artistic director of the Bregenz Festival, scheduled to begin in the 2025 season. It is envisaged that the new atistic director will be selected in April 2023 at the latest. The five-member executive board, chaired by festival president Hans-Peter Metzler, has appointed an ad hoc advisory committee of experts and hired the respected management consulting company Egon Zehnder GmbH. The Bregenz Festival’s current artistic director, Elisabeth Sobotka, leaves for the Staatsoper Berlin at the end of the summer in 2024.

Sophie de Lint and Kasper Holten expert advisers
Two outstanding figures on the international music theatre scene have been engaged as expert advisers: the director of Dutch National Opera, Sophie de Lint, and the artistic director of the Royal Danish Opera, Kasper Holten. Holten has personal knowledge of the Bregenz Festival as he was stage director of the lake stage production of Carmen in 2017 / 2018. The vacant post is advertised on the festival’s website, www.bregenzerfestspiele.com among other sites. The application period ends on 12 November (inclusive). 

The Bregenz Festival Foundation, established in 2002, is the one hundred percent shareholder of Bregenzer Festspiele GmbH, organiser of the Bregenz Festival, which takes place every year in the summer months. The founders are the patrons’ association Friends of the Bregenz Festival, the Republic of Austria, the federal state of Vorarlberg, and the municipality of Bregenz. The foundation is directed by the members of the executive board: Hans-Peter Metzler (president), Verena Brunner-Loss (vice president), Wilhelm Muzyczyn (vice president), Michael Grahammer and Sabine Haag.

First new lake stage production under the new artistic director in 2026
The first season for the Bregenz Festival’s new artistic director will be the summer of 2025, and the first new opera production on the lake stage under the new artistic director will be in summer 2026. The lake stage production of Madame Butterfly in the 2022 and 2023 seasons will be followed in 2024 and 2025 by Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz, to be staged by the director of the Bregenz Rigoletto, Philipp Stölzl.

Elisabeth Sobotka artistic director since 2015
The Berlin Senate’s Culture Department and the Bregenz Festival jointly announced Elisabeth Sobotka’s move in mid May. The Vienna-born cultural manager Sobotka has been in charge of programming at the summer festival in Bregenz since 2015. She will take over as artistic director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, one of the world’s leading opera houses, starting in the 2024/2025 season. She will fulfil her contract with the Bregenz Festival as agreed up to the end of its duration after the 2024 summer season.

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